Source:gta4.net

* Video Card: 512MB NVIDIA 8600 / 512MB ATI 3870

The title surrounded by enormous hype during its development, and is widely recognised to have passed the expectations set upon it. This addition to the Grand Theft Auto series has been warmly welcomed by the general public, and has strengthened Rockstar Games’ position at the head of the industry. It has also sold over 20 million copies in the opening month, no small accomplishment.

Boasting partnerships with leaders of the entertainment industry such as Interscope Records and Universal Music, Rockstar aims to compliment their game with one of the strongest soundtracks ever in a video game.

“Five years ago Carl Johnson escaped from the pressures of life in Los Santos, San Andreas… a city tearing itself apart with gang trouble, drugs and corruption. Where filmstars and millionaires do their best to avoid the dealers and gangbangers.

Now, it’s the early 90s. Carl’s got to go home. His mother has been murdered, his family has fallen apart and his childhood friends are all heading towards disaster.

On his return to the neighborhood, a couple of corrupt cops frame him for homicide. CJ is forced on a journey that takes him across the entire state of San Andreas, to save his family and to take control of the streets.

Liberty City. Vice City. Now San Andreas, a new chapter in the legendary series. Grand Theft Auto returns to the PlayStation®2 this October.”

In a press release ending the fiscal year of 2004, Take 2 Games announced the success of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The title alone brought in 54% of the fourth quarter sales of 2004. The latest sales numbers have passed $300 million, and the title has set records in the UK for the fastest selling video game title. According to NPDFunworldSM data, San Andreas was the top selling PlayStation 2 title in the United States in October and November 2004, and has so far brought in close to 30% more revenue than its predecessor Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

In an attempt to maximise exposure and bring the game to a wider market, Rockstar Games announced that it is planning a simulatenous release of San Andreas on PC and XBOX in the summer of 2005.

A whole host of added features to enhance gameplay have been mentioned. We’ve been promised much more indepth missions – rather than the rather mundane pickup > drop off > kill procedings of GTA3, much more engrossing tasks should be set. Remember the brilliant mission in GTA3 where you had to give covering fire for 8-ball down in the docks whilst he planted a bomb? This mission has been used as a marker-point for following missions.

As you can tell, if only half of what they mention is true, then it is clearly worthy of a sequel. Rather than just a re-hash off the success of GTA3, they have clearly focussed on the criticisms. This is a whole new game – and it looks like they’re going to have to do something serious wrong to screw this one up.

A big criticism of the original. Grand Theft Auto 3 was built around the Renderware engine. Rockstar programmers really tweaked this rather limited engine to its limits – and what they produced was quite remarkable for what the Renderware engine was actually cut out to do. However many complained this wasn’t good enough – blocky textures and nasty popups plagued both the PS2 and PC version.

Since then the Renderware engine has been vastly improved. And look at the screenshots, you can definately see an improvement all-round. Textures are in a higher resolution and the framerate has been increased. The lighting system of the Renderware engine has been re-vamped; so expect to see real-time shadowing and reflections. The world seams generally much more colourful too – this perhaps could be due more to the new setting than the game engine, but it will certainly be a welcome relief after the dark seedy world of Liberty City.

Various other visual tweaks have been made sinse GTA3′s release. The camera has been tweaked to aid movement on-foot – the camera now fixes to an over-the-sholder view to easy targetting. Character models have also been given a new lease of life, now sporting much more detailed features overall.